The Consumer Goods are a Canadianindie rock/pop band hailing from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Members of the Consumer Goods take
part in other local bands including Lonely Hunters, Cone Five, The
Honeybuckets, and Paper Moon. The group has gained
attention on local and national college radio charts. Their debut
LP Pop Goes the Pigdog!, released April 20, 2006, reached
#1 on the UMFM
charts in June 2006 and subsequent records have made them a fixture
in the Canadian indie scene. They are often compared to other
politically-minded acts from Winnipeg, most notably The Weakerthans
and Propagandhi. The
Consumer Goods appear on the Winnipeg-based Grumpy Cloud
Records.

Contents

History

The Consumer Goods released their first record, Pop Goes the
Pigdog in 2006. By the summer of that year they were heralded
by CBC Radio 3 as an
"undeniably infectious activist pop unit". and had had garnered
four- and five-star ratings in a number of press reviews. The
exposure from the CBC appearance led to a second buzz in the fall
of 2006 and another crop of reviews, including one which suggested
that 'Pop Goes the Pigdog' be considered one of the top ten records
of the year. By the end of 2006, the record was ranked number four
for the year on the UMFM charts, based on radio airplay.

While originally based in Winnipeg, songwriter Tyler Shipley
relocated to Toronto, Ontario but was able to keep
the band together with some lineup shuffling. The band released
their second effort on May 18 2007. The new record was called
Happy Bidet, and featured an even more absurd array of
political and social critiques centered around a rejection of
capitalism and imperialism. What sets the record apart from many of
its contemporaries is its playful and ironic tone - the band
explicitly seeks to avoid heavy-handed polemics, instead offering
satirical silliness to the tune of beautiful melodies and catchy
hooks. As part of a new push from the Grumpy Cloud label, the band
toured from Calgary in the west to Halifax in the east, closing out
the year with a big show at the Gas Station Theatre at home in
Winnipeg.

The press around Happy Bidet was overwhelmingly
positive. The record received glowing reviews across the country,
with the exceptions of Edmonton (where it was panned) and Toronto
(where it was ignored.) It was popular on campus radio stations in
Canada, the US and in Europe, where it became a mainstay on radio
in cities as diverse as Den Haag, Marseilles, and Koln. It was also
featured on Cuba's famous Radio Habana. In
December 2007, the band was featured for a cover story in Uptown
Magazine, and had a song nominated for one of CBC Radio Three's Bucky
Awards.

Their third record, The Anti-Imperial Cabaret, was
released in 2008 and featured a cross-Canada tour that was very
successful until Shipley suffered a major injury in Ottawa, Ontario forcing the band
to cancel three shows. Despite the setback, the record received
good reviews and the band grew significantly as a result of the
more up-tempo pop effort. Central to the success of the record was
the single "Hockey Night in Afghanada," a sunny beach-pop song
skewering Don Cherry and the increasingly
problematic link between CBC's Hockey Night in Canada and the
Canadian invasion and occupation of Afghanistan - it was released
along with a rough hand-drawn animated video on youtube. The band gained
new exposure and notoriety from the record and the video. But the
press buzz cooled off slightly, perhaps as a result of the
relentlessly political nature of the lyrics, which moved
significantly (though consciously, according to Shipley) into the
realm of the absurd with songs that featured Royal Canadian Mounted
Police officers fetishizing their tasers and undocumented
workers celebrating their poverty in Arnold Schwartzenegger's California. The
record also featured a cover of Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come."

No word on whether there are plans for a new record anytime
soon. It is assumed that plans for any new material were delayed by
Shipley's prominent involvement in a strike by CUPE 3903 at York University
and the band's websites have been quiet since that strike began.
However, an unofficial strike song called "We'll Go All The Way,"
featuring Shipley on banjo, found its way to YouTube. The song
appears to be an adaptation of a traditional arrangement and
borrows its structure from Old Man Luedecke's "Little Bird."

In 2009, Shipley said he would be going into the studio this
year to record a banjo-based record called "Sentinel Road" drawing
on the personal and collective experiences of the York Strike.

Political and cultural
references

Many of the Consumer Goods' songs refer to contemporary and
historical politics and culture. For example:

the famous U.S. supreme court case of Roe V. Wade is used as
a backdrop to the amusing pro-choice anthem "Rovie Wade"

Canadian Conservative hockey pundit Don
Cherry is the central character in satirical pop anthem "Hockey
Night in Afghanada"

Malcolm X's speech
about violent and non-violent revolution is featured on "Christmas
in Camden"

Winnipeg mayor Sam
Katz is mocked for his repressive civic record in "And The
Final Word is Yours, Sam Katz"

the 1898 invasion of Cuba by
the United States in the Spanish-American
War, and subsequent imperialist domination of the island until
1959, is referenced in "Gunboat Diplomacy"

"Lord's Not On My Side" appears to flow directly from Bob Dylan's "With God On
Their Side" and makes reference to Condoleezza Rice's comment in 2006,
"may god forgive the terrorists"

"The Terminator Rules" is a reference to Arnold Schwartzenegger, the Hollywood actor
who played the role of The Terminator in the 1990s and who now
holds the office of California Governor - the song references his
aggressive policies towards undocumented foreign workers in that
state. The song refers to the trailer park Duroville.[1]

Mao Zedong's
aphorism "Revolution is no tea party" is featured on the track of
the same name

the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon is the subject of
"Lebanong Song"

Winston
Churchill's unfortunate description of Iraq as an "ungrateful
volcano" when Iraqis refused to comply with British subjugation
after the First World War is the subject of the song
of the same name